Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday bestowed a 65th birthday honour on Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, in the Syria conflict and companion on wilderness trips.

Putin sent Shoigu birthday greetings and signed a decree awarding him one of Russia’s highest decorations, the “For Merit to the Fatherland” medal in the first degree.

Previous recipients of the medal include Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov and the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

Shoigu, an engineer by training who led the emergency ministry before heading the armed forces, already has a chestfull of medals that he wears on occasions such as the Victory Day parade on Red Square.

These include the very prestigious Hero of Russia star.

One of Russia’s most popular officials who first came to public attention fighting fires and floods, Shoigu rarely makes political statements.

He comes from Siberian Tuva region close to the border with Mongolia, and is one of the few representatives of Russia’s ethnic minorities in top politics.

As defence chief since 2012, he has presided over a massive modernisation of the armed forces with latest-generation weaponry including hypersonic missiles and reinforced troop presence from the Arctic to the Pacific.

He has also overseen Russia’s military intervention in Syria since 2015 in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Known for unshakeable loyalty to the Russian Federation, Shoigu has often accompanied the president on macho fishing and wildlife-spotting trips.

These included one in 2008 where Putin shot a Siberian tiger with a tranquiliser dart and then kissed it.

On their most recent trip in October, they picked mushrooms by the banks of the Yenisei River in Siberia.

Source: AFP

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that millions of people could be pushed into extreme poverty in Africa due to the coronavirus pandemic and called for “global solidarity” with the continent.

“The pandemic threatens African progress. It will aggravate long-standing inequalities and heighten hunger, malnutrition and vulnerability to disease,” Guterres said in a statement accompanying a UN study with recommendations for the African continent.

While he congratulated Africa for responding swiftly to the pandemic, which has claimed more than 2,500 lives across the continent, Guterres noted that “as of now, reported cases are lower than feared.”

“African countries should also have quick, equal and affordable access to any eventual vaccine and treatment, that must be considered global public goods,” he said in his statement.

Since the pandemic is still in its “early days” in Africa, Guterres stressed that “disruption could escalate quickly.”

“Global solidarity with Africa is an imperative – now and for recovering better,” he said.

Call for more than $200 billion in aid

Among his recommendations, Guterres urged “international action to strengthen Africa’s health systems, maintain food supplies, avoid a financial crisis.”

It is also necessary, he added, to “support education, protect jobs, keep households and businesses afloat, and cushion the continent against lost income and export earnings.”

Guterres called for “more than $200 billion as additional support from the international community” to help Africa recover from the pandemic.

He said he was also advocating “a comprehensive debt framework – starting with an across-the-board debt standstill for countries unable to service their debt.”

Source: AFP

China’s ambassador to Israel has been found dead at his residence in a coastal suburb north of Tel Aviv, Israeli officials say.

Ambassador Du Wei, 57, was found by an embassy worker in his bed on Sunday morning, they said.

His wife and son were not in Israel at the time and the cause of death was not immediately clear.

Du was appointed to Israel on February 15 after serving in Ukraine. He quarantined himself for two weeks because of the coronavirus pandemic before meeting Israeli officials on March 3.

Du had served in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for more than 30 years, according to a biography on the Chinese Embassy’s website.

China’s burgeoning relations with Israel have been vexing the United States which regards the occupied territories as its backyard in the Middle East. 

During his visit to Israel on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said China’s investments in the territories could pose a security risk, particularly in the area of infrastructure.

On Friday, the Chinese Embassy in Israel referred to the warning and Pompeo’s claims that China had concealed information about the outbreak of the coronavirus from the world, dismissing them as “absurd.”

An embassy statement noted that “scientists still haven’t identified the origin of COVID-19,” and that China never concealed the outbreak of the disease in the country. It also said the United States is currently the epicenter of the pandemic.

In an interview with Israel’s Makor Rishon newspaper in April, Du addressed the matter of Chinese investments in Israel, expressing hope for further cooperation.

He also expressed hope to strengthen the ties between Israel and China, addressing the accusations leveled at his country as being the one responsible for the outbreak of the virus.

Israel, however, recommended against travel to China in February and urged all residents of Israel in China to leave after suspending all direct flights to the country.

Source: Presstv

Brazil’s COVID-19 death toll passed 15,000 on Saturday, official data showed, while its number of infections topped 230,000, making it the country with the fourth-highest number of cases in the world.

With 15,633 deaths and 233,142 confirmed cases, Brazil – whose president Jair Bolsonaro has dismissed the disease as a “little flu” – is at the epicenter of infections in Latin America.

Experts say under-testing means the real figures could be 15 times higher or more, and warn the worst is yet to come.

The sprawling South American country registered 816 deaths and 14,919 new cases in the past 24 hours. Brazil’s outbreak is now the fourth largest in the world, according to official figures.

Despite the rising tolls, Bolsonaro on Saturday attacked lockdown measures taken by some governors to contain the spread of the virus.

“Unemployment, hunger and misery will be the future of those who support the tyranny of total isolation,” the far-right president tweeted, a day after Health Minister Nelson Teich resigned after less than a month on the job.

Brazil’s vice president, Hamilton Mourao, underwent a COVID-19 test and was placed in isolation at his official residence on Saturday, after a public servant who had been near him last week tested positive.

Mourao, 66, will not fulfill official duties on Monday, when the results are expected. Bolsonaro has undergone several coronavirus tests after ministers and other close aides tested positive.

Nationwide testing in Brazil still lags far behind European nations. Brazil had processed nearly 338,000 novel coronavirus tests in official labs by the beginning of the week, according to the Health Ministry. Another 145,000 tests were under analysis or waiting in line.

The pandemic has already claimed almost 310,000 lives worldwide.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)

Without wearing a face mask himself, President Donald Trump toured a mask distribution center in Pennsylvania on Thursday and announced plans to replenish the US strategic stockpile of medical equipment depleted by the coronavirus outbreak.

Trump, a Republican who is running for re-election in November, has resisted wearing a mask in public despite his administration’s guidance to Americans to wear them and new White House rules requiring that staff wear them at work.

The president toured the Owens & Minor Inc distribution center, which the White House said has sent millions of N95 masks, surgical gowns and gloves to hospitals and surgery centers across the United States. Company officials wore masks.

Trump visited a mask production facility in Arizona last week, when he also did not wear a face covering, though he said he tried some on backstage.

Pennsylvania is a political swing state wooed by both Republicans and Democrats in presidential elections. Though the Thursday event was arranged by the White House, it had campaign overtones, with music similar to what is played at Trump’s rallies and a pejorative reference by the president to his expected Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump accused the Obama administration of allowing the stockpile to be depleted. Trump has been in office for three years; the coronavirus outbreak started hitting the United States earlier this year.

Trump said his administration would seek to have three months’ worth of supplies on reserve rather than one to three weeks’ worth.

“I’m determined that America will be fully prepared for any of the future outbreaks, of which we hope there’s going to be none,” he said during remarks after his tour.

The president has previously sought to downplay the possibility of the coronavirus returning in the fall, though doctors have said it is very likely.

A senior administration official told reporters earlier on Thursday that the Trump administration was seeking to add 300 million N95 masks, the respiratory protective devices that are key to protecting medical workers fighting the deadly coronavirus, to the US stockpile by the fall.

The official said the administration hoped ultimately to replenish its strategic national stockpile, which had only 13 million N95s at the beginning of the outbreak, to 1 billion in total.

The administration is seeking to shore up medical supplies as part of a bid to prepare for future flare-ups of coronavirus cases, as states nationwide begin to reopen after lockdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.

(Source: Reuters)

A northeastern Chinese city has partially shut its borders and cut off transport links after the emergence of a local coronavirus cluster that has fuelled growing fears of a second wave of infections in China.

Jilin, with a population of more than four million, suspended bus services Wednesday and said it will only allow residents to leave the city if they have tested negative for COVID-19 in the past 48 hours and complete an unspecified period of “strict self-isolation”.

All cinemas, indoor gyms, internet cafes and other enclosed entertainment venues must shut immediately, and pharmacies must report all sales of fever and antiviral medicines, the local government said in a statement.

The city is located in the eponymous province of Jilin.

A cluster of infections was reported in the suburb of Shulan over the weekend, with Jilin’s vice mayor warning Wednesday that the situation was “extremely severe and complicated” and “there is major risk of further spread”.

The city reported six new cases on Wednesday, all linked to the Shulan cluster, bringing the total number of cases linked to a local laundry worker to 21.

Shulan shut down public transportation as well as trains leaving the city on Sunday.

Jilin city, the second-largest in Jilin province, also suspended train services from its main railway station Wednesday morning, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

China has largely brought the virus under control, but it has been on edge about a potential second wave as it has lifted lockdowns and restrictions across the country.

The emergence of new cases in Wuhan in recent days, after weeks without fresh infections, has prompted a campaign to test all 11 million residents in the city where COVID-19 first emerged late last year.

Source: AFP

President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would start gradually easing coronavirus-related lockdown measures from Tuesday, but that individual regions would need to tailor their approach to varying local conditions.

“Starting from tomorrow, May 12, the national period of non-working days will be over for all sectors of the economy,” Putin said.

The president’s announcement comes after Russia registered a record number of daily cases Monday, with more than 11,000 people testing positive over the last 24 hours.

Health officials have recorded a total of 221,344 coronavirus infections and 2009 deaths.

Putin said that Russia had used the self-isolation period to prepare its healthcare system, increasing the amount of hospital beds and saving “many thousands of lives.”

This “allows us to begin a gradual lifting of restrictions”, he said.

“It is in the interest of all of us for the economy to return to normal quickly.”

Construction, agriculture and energy should be restarted first, he added.

“The epidemic and associated restrictions have had a strong impact on the economy and hurt millions of our citizens,” he said.

As people begin going back to work, mass events are still suspended and “strict sanitation demands” must be observed, Putin said.

He added that Russia’s regions will be able to keep in place any necessary anti-virus measures.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

US President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed concerns over the possible spread of coronavirus in the White House but said he may limit contact with Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump, speaking to masked reporters in the White House Rose Garden, suggested that Pence was in quarantine after his press secretary tested positive, though he did not say it outright.

Katie Miller, the spokeswoman for Pence, who heads the White House’s coronavirus task force, tested positive for coronavirus last week along with a personal valet to Trump.

Three members of the task force have since gone into quarantine – infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Stephen Hahn, head of the Food and Drug Administration.

A Pence spokesman denied over the weekend that the vice president was also in quarantine but Trump suggested he was when asked on Monday whether he had considered limiting his contact with him.

“I would say that he and I will be talking about that,” Trump said at an occasionally testy press conference.

“During this quarantine period, we’ll probably talk,” Trump said. “I have not seen him since then.”

“We can talk on the phone,” he said of Pence. “He tested negative, so we have to understand that, but he comes into contact with a lot of people.”

‘No vulnerability whatsoever’

Trump sought to play down any concerns about an outbreak of the virus in the cramped quarters of the West Wing, where the president works out of the Oval Office.

“We want to keep our country running so we have a lot of people coming in and out (of the White House) and many of those people, most of those people, are tested,” he said.

“Everybody coming into the president’s office gets tested, and I’ve felt no vulnerability whatsoever,” he said.

Trump, who is desperately seeking to reboot the economy ahead of the November election, said the US was making “tremendous strides” in ramping up testing and the number of virus infections is “coming down very rapidly.”

He said it was essential to get the country reopened.

“The people want our country open,” the president said.

“Some states could be moving more quickly,” he said. “People are dying in the lockdown position too.”

Trump abruptly ended the press conference after an exchange with a CBS News reporter who asked him why when Americans were losing their lives did he keep insisting that the US was doing better than other countries when it came to testing.

“Well, they’re losing their lives everywhere in the world,” Trump said. “And maybe that’s a question you should ask China. Don’t ask me, ask China that question, OK?”

The CBS reporter, Weijia Jiang, who is of Chinese-American origin, than asked Trump “Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically?”

“I’m telling. I’m saying it to anybody who would ask a nasty question like that,” Trump replied before abruptly ending the press conference.

‘Scary to go to work’

Though it may appear spacious in movies and TV shows, the West Wing is actually rather cramped, making social distancing difficult.

It houses not just the president’s office but also those of some of his closest advisers, the press briefing room and the desks of White House correspondents, who work elbow to elbow.

Kevin Hassett, a senior economic advisor to the president, told CBS over the weekend that it is “scary to go to work.”

“I would be safer sitting at home in my house than going into a West Wing that with even all the testing in the world and the best medical team on Earth, is a relatively crammed place,” Hassett told another network, CNN.

In a memo issued on Monday, the White House instructed all staff to wear a mask when inside the West Wing, except when at their desks.

Unlike a number of other world leaders, the 73-year-old Trump has not been wearing a mask in public.

He said Monday that Americans have “learned about face masks.”

“The good and the bad, by the way,” he said.

“It’s not a one-sided thing, believe it or not,” Trump said without elaborating.

The United States is the country the hardest-hit by the virus with more than 80,000 deaths and 1.3 million infections.

(AFP)

Former President Barack Obama harshly criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News.

Obama also reacted to the Justice Department dropping its criminal case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying he worried that the “basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”

More than 78,400 people with COVID-19 have died in the United States and more than 1.3 million people have tested positive, according to the latest estimates from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Obama’s comments came during a Friday call with 3,000 members of the Obama Alumni Association, people who served in his administration. Obama urged his supporters to back his former vice president, Joe Biden, who is trying to unseat Trump in the Nov. 3 election.

“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we’re seeing that internationally as well. It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty,” Obama said, according to Yahoo News.

“It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government,” he said.

White House press secretary responds

Trump has consistently defended and boasted of his response to the virus, saying that travel restrictions from China and Europe as well as social distancing guidelines have prevented far greater damage. “I think we saved millions of lives,” he said earlier this week.

Trump has criticized the Obama administration in relation to his own administration’s response to the outbreak. Yet Trump’s contention that his administration inherited “a broken system and a broken test” from Obama’s is false; the novel coronavirus did not exist until late last year. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention struggled to develop its own test in January and then discovered problems in its kits in February.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not mention Obama directly in her response to his remarks.

“President Trump’s coronavirus response has been unprecedented and saved American lives,” she said. “While Democrats were pursuing a sham witch hunt against President Trump, President Trump was shutting down travel from China.”

She added: “While Democrats encouraged mass gatherings, President Trump was deploying PPE, ventilators, and testing across the country.”

Obama has generally kept a low profile on current political events, even when Trump would disparage him or his administration on Twitter. But Friday’s call indicates that he’ll be playing an active role in the coming election. He told supporters that he would be “spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden.”

Source: AP

The Cameroonian authorities must come clean on the reality of the spread of COVID-19 in the country’s prisons, provide detainees with adequate medical care and stop exacerbating overcrowding with arbitrary arrests, Amnesty International said today.

The organisation confirms that at least one prisoner has tested positive for the virus at the “Kondengui” central prison in Yaoundé and has been taken to a health facility outside the prison. While authorities have not confirmed or denied the presence of the virus in detention facilities, Amnesty International received information stating the number of current and former detainees tested positive could be much higher.

“As COVID-19 spreads in Cameroon, it is essential that detainees and their families have access to accurate information about the virus. The poor conditions in detention centres mean they risk becoming epicenters of the pandemic unless urgent action is taken,” said Fabien Offner, Amnesty International West and Central Africa researcher.

“Authorities must take all necessary measures to allow those in prison to enjoy standard health-care services free of charge and without discrimination, and to urgently reduce the overall number of people in detention.”

According to the National commission on human rights and freedoms, the occupancy rate was high in many prisons in Cameroon, reaching 432 % in ‘’Kondengui’’, 729% in Bertoua prison (East), 481% in Sangmelima (South) and 567% in Kumba Main Prison (South-West).

Following a 15 April presidential decree commuting and remitting sentences, hundreds of prisoners have been released in all the regions. For example, 831 prisoners, were released in the Far North region, and the number falling from 3,370 to 2,547 detainees, according to state media. An independent source also confirms to Amnesty International that 214 detainees were released in the Maroua prison (Far North).

While this is a first welcome step in reducing overcrowding in prisons, it remains far from sufficient. Measures to fight the spread of the virus in detention facilities should include the release of detainees who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 such as the elderly or those with underlying medical conditions.

‘’Many inmates are sick in the central prison of Yaoundé’’

Prison conditions are dire in the central prison of Yaoundé. An inmate told Amnesty International:

“Prisoners often die in this prison; no one can really say who is contaminated. Many inmates are sick and because of the congestion everyone is scared. Those who are sick also fear going to the prison health services because of rumours of COVID-19 patients being admitted there”.

Most inmates who present COVID-19 symptoms are treated using hot liquids mixed with ginger and garlic. Last month, five other deaths have been reported in a week, according to independent sources. A letter sent on 21 April to the Ministry of Justice on behalf of detainees highlighted the persistent overcrowding, describing the nursing station in prisons as “saturated with sick detainees” and the medical staff as “overwhelmed”.

On 23 April, authorities announced measures aimed at containing the virus inside the central prison in Yaoundé, including the suspension of outside chores, the establishment of observation cells for suspected COVID-19 cases, disinfection operations and the application of barrier gestures.

At least two sick detainees died shortly after their release

According to information received by Amnesty International, at least two sick detainees died shortly after their release. One was buried in conditions applied to COVID-19 deaths without the presence of his family, although no test was made to determine the cause of death.

Even if authorities recently released some detainees, they failed to positively respond to the National commission on human rights and freedoms’ call to release the elderly who are most vulnerable to the virus, and to the UN call to release sick detainees, and those jailed without legal basis, including prisoners of conscience.

Detained prisoners of conscience include Mamadou Mota, vice-president of opposition party MRC, jailed for participating in peaceful protests and for “rebellion in group”. Others include Anglophones detained for protesting peacefully either against the alleged irregularities during the 2018 presidential election or in demand for economic and social rights in English-speaking regions.

Mancho Bibixy Tse is one of them. He was arrested on 9 January 2017 and sentenced on 25 May 2018 by a military court to 15 years in prison for “terrorism”, simply for having peacefully protested the marginalization of English-speaking Cameroonians.
Sick detainees still jailed include Amadou Vamoulke, 70, former director of state TV, who suffers from a severe pathology certified by two neurologists. He was arrested in July 2016 and has been illegally detained after his pre-trial detention exceeded the legal limit.

Among those detained for speaking out, there is political activist Franck Boumadjieu. He was arbitrarily arrested on 16 April 2020 for having denounced the silence of President Paul Biya since the start of the COVID-19 crisis and was sentenced to three months in prison and fined.

“Keeping elderly or sick people in detention or releasing them just to blow their last breath outside is inhumane. Authorities must treat prisoners with the respect due to their inherent dignity and value as human beings,” Fabien Offner said.

“Continuing to fill prisons with people who have done nothing but exercising their right to freedom of expression is not only a violation of international law, but is also hampering efforts to contain the virus.”

Culled from Amnesty International